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Narcos

The finale of Narcos Season 2 was the best episode of the series. The finale of Narcos Season Three…isn’t.

“Going Back to Cali,” Narcos‘ incongruously titled third season finale, is an attempt to sell aftermath as main event. Having bagged all four of the Cali Godfathers by the time the credits roll — even setting time aside for Pacho Herrera’s final cruel crusade against his North Valley enemies…

…the bulk of the episode is concerned with, of all things, capturing their lead accountant Pallomari. As played by enormously talented actor Javier Cámara, aka gentle Monsignor Gutierrez on The Young Pope, this character is a laugh a minute; whether haggling with the DEA about his witness-protection arrangement, arguing with his unfaithful wife about the need to evacuate, or bragging to American juries about his importance, he more than holds down his end of this episode’s dramatic bargain.

But in the grand scheme of things, who the hell cares? Americans aside, the stars of this season have been Jorge Salcedo and his quartet of kingpin bosses. As such, I am completely baffled by the creative decision to show us the final fates of the four Cali Godfathers and their lead betrayer not in an immersive, narrative format, but as a sort of post-facto, voiceover-narrated afterthought. I mean, come on. After all the fucking time spent on arresting the fucking cartel accountant, however funny he is as an actor, we learn the destiny of Gilberto, Miguel, Chepe, and Pacho during a fucking montage?

Chepe makes an ill-fated overture to the Castaño Brothers and gets beaten and shot to death for his troubles.

Pacho gets gunned down by his North Valley enemies during a prison-yard soccer match.

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Miguel and Gilbert learn that their sweetheart deal with the government is over and get extradited to the United States for sentencing.

And Jorge winds up a car mechanic, grabbing lunch at KFC, like a South American Saul Goodman.

In all four cases, you have no you-are-there, eye-view perspective whatsoever. It’s all seconds-long snippets in a sequence narrated by Agent Peña — as if his point of view were the star attraction, rather than the emotions of the four men whose stories we’re seeing come to their sad conclusions. We need their side of the story for any of this to carry any weight whatsoever. Pallomari is funny; these five guys deserve every second of screentime he’s given istead.

Indeed, an overestimation of Peña as a character and narrator may well be the series’ fatal flaw. Do a little research and you’ll learn that by his own admission, the real Agent Peña had nothing to do with the Cali Godfathers’ takedown. Nor was he the lone voice of reason who shook the Colombian government to its knees by spilling the beans about its president’s acceptance of narco-dollars for his campaign.

In point of fact, President Samper’s complicity with the Cali cartel was well known well before any of the godfathers got arrested. Hell, if you pay close attention to the various montages of real-life news footage and newspaper headlines, you’ll even notice references to “President-Elect Samper” answering charges of corruption — placing the exposure of his campaign’s links to Cali well before the cartel kingpins’ capture.

Now, I’ll grant you that this is a drama first and foremost, and as such it’s welcome to “print the legend” where legend and facts come into conflict. But it’s hard to figure out why the show played things in this fashion — why it didn’t depict the government as complicit in Cali’s racket from the jump, and make that the primary obstacle that the DEA agents had to hurdle to get their men.

At least, it would be hard to figure out, if there weren’t a political undercurrent at work. Narcos Seasons One and Two made no bones about being about anything about vendettas: A billionaire crook went berserk, so the governments of Colombia and America went berserk in turn until they finally tracked him down and slaughtered him like an animal. This time around? Agent Peña, who in reality wasn’t a part of this campaign at all, risked mind body and soul (not just his!) to destroy a cartel and expose its government backers — just to show the world the real villains of the Drug War. The problem is that everyone is the goddamn villain of the Drug War, people like Peña included.

Constructing the whole season so that it all leads to Javi’s fictitious self-martyrdom — a man who wasn’t there, exposing a scandal that had already been exposed — feels like a betrayal of everything that made the series’ first two seasons such compelling, no-bullshit viewing. If, as seems likely, Narcos plans to keep Agent Peña in play by moving him into the war against Mexico’s Juarez cartel like some sort of narco-zombie, the downfall of the show will be complete. For Narcos to be anything more than a diverting ten-hour timekill — the equivalent of a Law & Order: SVU marathon, without the benefit of Meloni, Hargitay, Belzer, or Ice T — it will need to examine its core philosphy. “Drugs are bad, m’kay” will not cut it, no matter how sexy Pedro Pascal can get.